I continue with the audio material by Bill Gates Sr,
Showing Up for Life. In this segment, he talks about the value of hard work.
One of the reason Bill Gates Sr gave for working as hard
as he did when he was younger was that he likes working, and the challenge of
making decisions where there is the risk of failing.
Another reason was because of his father. He recounted
that in his first summer job during high school, he worked as a ‘swamper’ in
his father’s furniture store, lifting furniture and delivering them to people’s
home. In 1912, his grandfather, William Henry Gates agreed to $733 to buy a
furniture store in downtown street Bremerton. Bill Gates Sr said that his Dad’s
life revolved around the store. His image of his dad was him walking around
every night picking up coal that had fallen off the trucks and putting them
into their coal box. Coal then was used for heating. The reason was due to the
era of the Great Depression and there was the fear of poverty. Bill Gates Sr
stated that his father had learnt what it meant to be poor long before the
Depression, who as an eight years old, sold newspaper in the freezing cold of
Alaska to help the family get by while his dad went panning for gold. As an
eight grader, he gave up school to support the family. He didn’t go to movies
or ball games, fish or bowl or hike, or take a vacation.
Bill Gates Sr recounted how in the early days of
Microsoft, his son, Trey (Bill Gates) and his partner, Paul Allen worked, ate
and slept in their first office where they wrote software programs. There were
no days off, and they worked at the same relentless pace for decades.
It is ironic that I remember coming across a quote by Bill
Gates which goes “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy
person will find an easy way to do it.” I suppose one can dispute the
conventional wisdoms sometimes, and see things in more than one way.
Another contrarian remark that I read came from Warren
Buffet who quotes Ronald Reagan - “Hard work never kills anyone. But why risk
it?”
In addition, I think it also important to question
whether one’s hard work is being adequately rewarded for. Is there a better way
to do things? And who stands to gain from all the hard work that is being put
in, especially when one is working for another person as an employee?
The wisdom teacher in the book of Ecclesiastes makes some
really apt points about work to put things into perspective. In Ecclesiastes
4:4-8 – “And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one
person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Fools
fold their hands and ruin themselves. Better one handful with tranquility than
two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind. Again I saw something
meaningless under the sun: There was a man all alone; he had neither son nor
brother. There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his
wealth. “For whom am I toiling,” he asked, “and why am I depriving myself of
enjoyment?” This too is meaningless— a miserable business!” The point here is moderation when it comes to
work. To not be like the fool who impoverishes himself with his laziness, but
it is also meaningless to work oneself to the bones and deprive oneself of
enjoyment in life.
Some people work to the extent that they forget how to
live life when they are not working, and find it difficult to enjoy themselves
on their vacation or on their day off. What comes to my mind now is a snippet
from Lee Kuan Yew, who speaking from his own experience, called on elderly
Singaporeans to be more “productive” and work as long as they can: “You work as
long as you can work and you will be healthier and happier for it. If you ask
me to stop working all of a sudden, I think I’ll just shrivel up, face the wall
and just that,” he said. It’s like he doesn’t know what to do apart from
working anymore. I like this quote from one of my favourite writers of all
time, Lin Yu Tang, from his book “The Importance of Living” – “If you can spend
a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned
how to live”
I suppose my approach when it comes to work is to learn
to find means of earning a living where I find fulfillment and do good, and to
bargain for my fair share of wage commensurating with the profit I gain for the
company, and to find ways and means in society to which I can invest my money,
such as through entrepreneurships or through investment vehicles like stocks
and shares.
I wouldn’t want to have to work to such an extent that I
have to compromise my Christian commitments, such as not going to church on
Sundays or constantly missing on weekly fellowship meetings, or I won’t have to
time to spend with my family. And I guess it would be necessary to set out the
rules from the start when finding employment that I would draw the lines as
such. As of now, I am not sure whether I am someone who can handle too much
stress or too much work, such as having to work overnight and going on sleep
deprivation.
I heard that as a lawyer, the working hours are long,
especially in the private firms. A senior I know relates to me how she is getting
burned out from the long hours and workload she is getting from a big law firm,
and having to work throughout the weekends. It makes me apprehensive on wanting
to choose such a law firm to work at. On the other hand, I have heard how work
life is pretty balanced being a Deputy Public Prosecutor at the Attorney
General’s Chamber.
I really could do better by knowing how to make money,
and not be trapped in the conventions where I earn a regular stipend working
hard and long hours for others. I suppose I will try studying how rich people
make their money to see if there are effective ways of making money without
exhausting myself with too much work.
